Chirurgeon
Chirurgeon is one of the sub-types of the Wizened seeming. They are the forgers of Faerie weapons and superb equipment. Theirs is the blessing of The Analeptic Charm. Overview So many of the Lost became what they are by undergoing bizarre surgeries to remold them into a new form. Chirurgeons may have been the ones holding the scalpel. Trained to assist in the bizarre and seemingly pointless operations performed by certain Others, Chirurgeons are both doctor and patient. However, they have no Hippocratic oath to adhere to — or if they once did, they’re all but sure to have broken it during their time in Arcadia. A Chirurgeon is often a vital player within her freehold, even if her presence is such that most Lost dread having to seek out her services. Chirurgeons make stupendous underworld doctors, particularly given their ability to operate with only the rudest of improvised tools. Some set up practice as precisely that among mortal society, as their displacement makes it all but impossible to practice medicine more openly. It may be unsavory to operate on murderers or provide organized criminals with cosmetic surgery, but it’s work. Chirurgeons possess exquisite hands, with long and nimble fingers any human surgeon might envy. Their manual dexterity is quite impressive, though never more so than when they’re holding a scalpel or suturing a wound. Most are pale, having spent so much of their time in the “facilities” provided by their Keepers. Some show literal scars and odd stitch-marks where an imprecise surgery healed poorly; others have odd grafts such as patches of discolored skin or hypodermic needles implanted under their fingernails. Durance The circumstances of a Chirurgeon’s durance are things other kiths don’t even like to think about. The images of blood-caked tables, racks of chromed needles, vats of unclean amniotic fluids holding half-visible pale forms, grotesquely jagged surgical tools, bits of graying flesh stitched together with black thread — all are true. A Chirurgeon is able to give a friend in the Autumn Court more than enough material to work with just by describing her jagged and blurred memories of Arcadia. Often, the changeling was the one undergoing the latest unnecessary or experimental surgical procedure; at other times, she was compelled to practice that trade on other captives. Folklore Legends often speak of miraculous feats of healing — arms and legs stitched back on without so much as a drop of blood lost, the dead raised to life. The Chirurgeon’s surgeries are never quite so neat and clean as the stories go, but they were comparably remarkable. Modern urban legend and folklore provides more of a place for the Chirurgeon. The half-glimpsed aliens who abduct people and perform unrecognizable experiments on them may have had Chirurgeons as their apprentices. The tales of black-market organ-running may have their roots in mortal behavior, but they may also speak of something more. Frailties Cannot injure a former patient, repelled by rue, may not cut dead flesh, bane of bird’s bones, repelled by the image of a black skull, cleanliness compulsions References *Changeling: the Lost (Rulebook), p. 122 *Winter Masques, p. 93 Category:Wizened (CTL) Category:Kith (CTL)